“I do.”
And then it all comes together. I finally made it. I’m here . . . in the magical forest . . . and I’m a caterpillar, floating in a pond that seems like an ocean because I’m so tiny. I begin laughing as we float on our lily pad raft.
“It’s good to see you smiling,” he says as I scoot around the large, green leaf, reveling in my new form.
Meandering around, I respond, “It’s been a while since I’ve felt this free.”
“May I ask you a question?”
Giggling after I round my body into a ball, discovering I can roll, I take a few seconds to play around before acknowledging his request, answering, “Of course,” as I straighten my body and inch over towards him.
“Why do you feel like you’re in hell?”
His question dulls my zealousness, and when I flatten my body against the lily pad, I tell him, “It’s always been hell, Carnegie. But lately, it’s become overwhelming.”
“What happened?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Look around,” he says. “I’ve got nothing but time.”
“I’m sure, but to relive everything isn’t something I wish to do.”
“Then tell me what happened last.”
I blink and then look up at the black sky, glittered in stars, and tell him, “I fell in love.”
“Ahh, love,” he says as if he’s wise in that spectrum, so I ask, “You ever been in love?”
“Me?” he questions and looks out over the water. “No. I was turned into a caterpillar before ever having the chance to experience such an emotion. But I wonder why it’s hell you feel.”
“The love is the only part of this story that isn’t hell.”
“Tell me what it feels like. Love.”
A few fireflies above catch my attention, and as I watch them making skittering dashes of swirling light, I answer, “Amazing. It’s like an urgency that can never be sated because you can’t get enough. One day, you’re walking through life, thinking you’re satisfied, well, as satisfied as you can be, and then, when you finally feel the click and get your first taste of love, you realize you’ve been starving your whole life but never knew it. And that one person is all you need to truly feel alive.”
“And you found that?”
Giving Carnegie my attention again, I reply, “Yeah. I never knew what it felt like to breathe until I met him.”
“So what’s hell?” he asks.
“The man I’m married to.”
“The one who allows you to breathe?”
“No, the one who slipped the noose around my throat and caused me a life of suffering,” I tell him as his beady eyes widen.
“I’m confused.”
“I married my enemy,” I begin to explain. “And the man I wound up falling in love with was someone who I was supposed to trick into killing my husband.”
“Why do you want your husband dead?”
“Because when I was five, I was ripped away from my dad. He was arrested and went to prison where he was eventually murdered, and I went to a horrendous foster home.”
“What does your husband have to do with that?”
“Everything,” I say as we continue to float around the smooth water. Releasing a deep breath, I begin telling him the story of my father’s arrest and how Pike was determined to find answers for me when we were older.
“It took a while, but after going through my father’s police records and Pike blackmailing his old caseworker for my file, we finally found out that it all started with a child abuse claim. We kept digging because my father was the kindest man I knew and had never laid a hand on me. And then we found it. A call was made to DCFS from the Vanderwal family.”
“Who are they?”
“I’ll give you one clue,” I say. “When I married my husband, Bennett, I took his name.”
“Vanderwal,” he concludes. “But why go after him if it was his parents who made the claim?”
“Because in that file was an interview. The interview was with Bennett.”
“It was his claim?”
“Yes,” I reply as I feel the hate begin to boil inside of me.
“What did it say?”
“He had been walking home from a friend’s house one afternoon, and when he passed my house, he heard fighting and screaming coming from inside. He saw my dad through the window hitting someone, but he couldn’t see the other person. He assumed it was me that was getting hit, so he went home, told his parents, and the call to DCFS was made.”
“Who was it that your father was hitting?”
“I couldn’t have been home that afternoon because I would have heard it. I was probably still at preschool or something. But looking back, with the information I have now, it was most likely someone he was doing business with. Maybe a deal gone bad; who knows?” I tell him. “The thing is, the state did their investigation. but they couldn’t find any signs of abuse or neglect. However, it was noted that the caseworker noticed suspicious activity at the house while performing random drive-by’s, so a request for further investigation was handed over to the police department who uncovered the gun trafficking. And that was it, he was arrested, and I never saw him again.”
Those last words choke me up, the pain of that last image of my father. It’s never faded for me; my father, on his knees, the tears running down his cheeks, his words, trying to convince me that everything would be okay.
When Carnegie begins to move closer to me, finding a new spot on the lily pad, I’m pulled from the sad memory, and he questions, “So why did you marry him?”
“I felt this burning desire to avenge my father’s murder, to make Bennett pay for all the abuse I suffered in foster care, for everything that was stolen from me.
My innocence.
My faith.
My childhood.
My trust.
My father.
My future.
Everything.
“Bennett is the reason there was a magnifying glass put on my father. It was Bennett who opened his mouth, made a false claim, and destroyed two lives, yet he goes on, happy, healthy, making his life into a glorious success. That was supposed to be my life. But because of him, he took it all away from me and I wound up being raped, molested, bound up in a closet, left for days to shit and piss all over myself. That’s the life Bennett gave me.
“I wanted to make him pay for what he did. I wanted revenge.”
“But you fell in love,” he states, and I whisper my confirmation, “I fell in love.”
“And now?”
“And now all I want is to spare destroying Declan. I still want to kill Bennett. I still want to make him pay, but not if it costs the good soul of the man I love.”
“Let me ask you something. How old was Bennett when he told his parents he thought you were being abused?”
“Eleven.”
Carnegie takes a moment before saying, “Just a kid. A young, innocent kid who saw something that probably scared him, thinking you were the one being hit, and his first reaction was to help.”
“But he didn’t help, and my dad wound up dead,” I defend.
“He was just a kid trying to do the right thing,” he counters, but instead of growing frustrated, the tranquility of being in this place with Carnegie keeps my frustrations at bay. “Can I ask you something else?”
I nod.
“What responsibility does your father hold in all of this?”
“My father was a good man,” I declare.
“I’m not taking that away from him. But everyone has two sides, and your father was a gun trafficker, was he not?”
Taking a moment, I concur, “Yeah. He was. But he never hurt anyone.”
“But he knew the illegal guns would hurt someone. He may not have been the one to pull the actual trigger, but in a way, he did pull that trigger,” he says before adding, “And it wouldn’t have mattered what Bennett ever said, the fact is, if your dad hadn’t been dealing in something illegal, Bennett’s claim would have been dropped and nothing would have ever happened.”
“I know what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to be the voice of reason, but I’ve never claimed to be a rational or reasonable person.”